U-Boot Release Cycle

Like with many other things, U-Boot development follows
the Linux model of a release cycle. That means:

We will have U-Boot releases at a fixed interval.

The release interval shall be (approximately) 3 months.

Immediately following each release,
there will be a "merge window"
of normally 2 weeks.
While this merge window is open,
new features can be added to the U-Boot source tree.
Linus Torvalds explains here
and there
what the term "merge window" is supposed to mean.

After the merge window closes,
no new features may be added
to allow for a release candidate phase
which is intended to fix bugs and regressions.

Note: even though we follow Linux ways in may respects,
there are differences in the actual procedures,
which are documented in section "Development Process".

Version Numbers:

Starting with the release in October 2008,
the names of the releases were changed from
numerical release numbers without deeper meaning
into a time stamp based numbering.
Regular releases are now identified by names
consisting of the calender year and month of the release date.
Additional fields (if present) indicate release candidates or
bug fix releases in "stable" maintenance trees.